almost
by dianaprincess
Summary: "The saddest word/in the whole wide world/is the world almost..." —Nikita Gill. Vignettes. Post-RotK.
1. the lady

_For _colorbloo,_ who asked for something Éowyn/Glorfindel._

_Commentary as well as an explanation of any _Silmarillion_ references will be posted at the end of the story._

* * *

**prologue**

The saddest word  
in the whole wide world  
is the word _almost_.

He was almost in love.  
She was almost good for him.  
He almost stopped her.  
She almost waited.  
He almost lived.  
They _almost_ made it.

—Nikita Gill

**i.**

She dreamed of it sometimes. There was red, so much _red_. Screams and smoke and ash and blood, the taste choking her; the sky dark with roiling shadows that rained down, staining a white city gray. A high shriek would pierce the heavy air, and she would stand still, paralyzed with that mind-numbing fear, and it would shriek again, _calling._

She would lower her blade in surrender, shaking fingers slick and red.

She would always wake up then, sweating and gasping, her muscles aching as if the battle had been real. That was what scared her the most: that she was not strong enough; that someday, she would no longer have the will to fight.

Her eyes would prickle and sobs would sting at her throat, but she could not weep, because she was strong. She was strong enough, she told herself. Strong enough to curl in on herself and beat back the screams building in her chest, staring at her wall until dawn reached its fingers past the heavy curtains of her bed and she rose, dark smudges under her eyes that looked bruises against the paleness of her skin.

If she allowed any of it to escape, allowed herself to let her guard down for even a second, she knew she would shatter.

The splint had been taken off her shield-arm, but her sword-arm still felt strangely numb, somehow. It would lessen in time, the Halfling had told her, the one missing a finger. (_The one who saved us all,_ her mind whispered, but she said nothing, because _glory_ was a draught that had soon turned bitter, and she thought that perhaps it was the same for him.)

She always rode out through the back of the city, because she could not stand again on those fields. She did not want to remember, not willing to find out what would happen if she tried. She wearied of the stares and whispers that followed her every step. She could not hide here, too bright and golden in a city of twilight and shadow. _I want to go home,_ she had finally whispered into her brother's shoulder, throat aching, and his lips brushed her brow as he pulled her close. _You are strong,_ he whispered back, but she was so, so tired of being strong.


	2. the warrior

**ii.**

Her fair face had haunted the edges of his mind for a thousand years.

_Hinder me?_ the wraith had hissed, almost amused. _Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!_

She had laughed then, a strange, fell sound that somehow matched the tears streaming down her cheeks. _But no living man am I! You look upon a woman._

Reckless despair had been in her eyes; she welcomed Death as it stood before her. It was her eyes, grey as the sea, that stood out in his mind as he stared, past exhaustion, at the dirty canvas of his tent in the lull between battles on campaigns that had begun to bleed into one endless stretch of _war_.

He recognized her look, for his was the same.

He had spent two lives at war. He had marched across the Grinding Ice, fought in one of the greatest battles of an age, beheld the utter ruin of his people. He had watched countless friends fall, screamed until he was hoarse with grief and fury. He had tried to keep this evil at bay, giving the world short centuries of peace he now knew were a lie, because there was no end. There would never be an end.

Oh, how he envied Men, for even in death he could not escape.

"Is it the Doom?" he had asked Olórin, adjusting the too-heavy sword strapped across his back. He missed the armor forged in Gondolin, scratched and dented and _his_, but it had been buried with a different body in a different life. (_I am a warrior,_ he reminded himself. _I cannot regret._)

Now guised as a weathered old man, Olórin leaned heavily on his staff and looked at him from beneath bushy eyebrows. "Your task is not yet finished," he stated gruffly, stepping aboard the ship, and Glorfindel followed.

He had followed Turgon. He had followed Olórin and Gil-galad; he would follow Elrond unto the Grey Havens. _They are gone,_ he thought, _yet I remain._ He was waiting, he realized one day as he stared at the bloody blade across his knees, though for what, he knew not.


	3. the lord

**iii.**

He rode to Gondor with the Evenstar when news reached them of the Dark Lord's defeat, knowing he would not return to Imladris. They were leaving, but he still could not follow. _Perhaps I will be the last,_ he thought as he first beheld the gates, remembering another white city, a last glimpse of scorched stone, gray with ash and red with blood, before everything turned to flame.

It was in the gardens at the top of the city that he found her. Her head was bowed, gold spilling down her back, and he _knew_, his heart suddenly pounding. She was alive, which he had not foreseen. She had lived, somehow, miraculously. He wished to speak with her, the woman he had glimpsed so long ago, but he did not know what to say, his tongue turned to lead.

He left as silently as he had come upon her, cursing his weakness.

She stood, grave and thoughtful, beside a man so alike to her in countenance that he decided was her brother, as Lady Arwen Undómiel of Imladris became Queen Arwen Undómiel of the Reunited Kingdom. The Queen was more radiant than he had seen since before the Shadow had descended upon Ennor. _You know nothing of what is to come, child,_ he thought bitterly. _Your grief will know no end. You have doomed yourself this day, and yet you rejoice._

He roamed the halls of the Citadel as they feasted, wishing to be elsewhere, anywhere but _here_, in this city with its seven gates and white marble so eerily familiar. His head rose at light footsteps in the corridor before him, and there _she_ stood, eyes widening as her cool gaze moved from the elaborate plaits of his hair to the exposed points of his ears.

She quickly curtsied in the half-light. "Forgive me, my lord. I did not mean to disturb you."

"Nay, lady," he said quickly, bowing in return. "You need not apologize for occupying the same halls as I." He paused, unsure once more. "We have not met," he said carefully, noticing the twitching of her fingers in the folds of her gown.

"I am called Éowyn of Rohan." Her eyes finally rose from the cobblestones to meet his, cold and guarded, and he wondered at the purposeful, almost _hopeful_ absence of a title, for plainly this was no common woman.

"I am called Glorfindel of Rivendell," he said.


	4. the caged bird

**iv.**

"Do you know of a Glorfindel?" she asked Lord Faramir as they stood again at the ramparts, gazing off at the clouds hanging low over the mountains.

"Glorfindel?" He turned to her, raven hair whipping across his pensive face in the wind, silent for a moment in thought. "There was a Glorfindel in ancient Gondolin who perished in the Fall, saving Princess Idril and her son from a Balrog. Eärnur, the last king of Gondor, fought alongside a Captain Glorfindel of Lindon against the forces of Angmar in the North. I know only of Elves of that name. The scribes in the library have histories that would surely speak more of whichever Glorfindel you wish to know of, though the libraries of Rivendell would know better still."

Her brow furrowed at the mention of the city. "What of a Glorfindel of Rivendell?"

"I know not. The King or Queen would better be able to assist you, if it is Rivendell you speak of."

She curtsied, skirts swishing softly against the mossy stone courtyard, and he bowed. "Many thanks, my lord."

"It is no trouble, lady." Her eyes caught his as she rounded the corner, meeting his thoughtful gaze for a moment before her steps carried her from his sight.

"Do you know of a Glorfindel of Rivendell?" she asked the Queen as a few ladies of court walked slowly through the gardens on the upper levels, accompanying her on her supervision of the renovations.

Arwen's clear grey eyes flicked to hers. "Yes, of course. He is one of the Captains of Imladris, perhaps my father's most trusted advisor save Gandalf." She bent down, inspecting a delicate white flower and tucking her loose hair behind a delicately pointed ear. "He is in the city, likely with my lord husband. Do you wish to meet him?"

"His name was spoken," she said carefully, "but I did not recognize it."

With a soft word to the gardener the Queen rose, brushing the dirt from her narrow fingers. "Aragorn has spoken to me of what transpired during the war. I wish no ill will between us." The Queen smiled, eyes twinkling merrily. "Whispers of the Steward and the White Lady have reached even my ears." After a moment she moved to the ramparts, face clouding as her voice lowered. "We are both strangers in this city. This is no more my home than it is yours. I hope there may be kinship between us, Lady Éowyn."

She nodded, the smile feeling odd on her face, as if it had been too long since her lips had had curved upward and her cheeks could not recall the movement. "As do I."


End file.
